Title: Making the Connection
Story Summary: A non-chronological collection of short chapters based on one word prompts, includes (pre-)slash for Johnlock & Mystrade
Chapter Summary: Sherlock is having a headache and John knows just how to help his friend. Prompt: Key
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Moffat, Gatiss & SACD.
A/N: This prompt came from VampireYami over at deviantART, if you'd like to prompt me you can do so in a review or a PM.
Sherlock was pacing up and down the sitting room. He walked over their armchairs and the couch with ease as if they weren't there. John sat in the kitchen, eating the last forks of his Chinese takeout silently while he watched his friend leaving his footprints on the Union Jack cushion.
"I know it must be important. The wine stain on the carpet is the missing puzzle piece. But how? How does it all fit together?" He dropped himself into John's armchair, hugging the maltreated cushion to his chest and rested the soles of his feet on the chair that he would usually sit in.
"I think I'm dehydrated. Could you bring me a glass of water, John?" Sherlock let his head fall on the chair's back, closed his eyes, and listened to his flatmate pouring him a glass of tab water and then walking over to him. He reached up with his hand, not needing to open his eyes to know that John was holding the glass on the level of his neck.
"Are you experiencing any symptoms of dehydration or did you just need an excuse to make me serve you something?" John asked, with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Sherlock did like that his friend took over some of the minor leg work during cases, it left him more time to think. It was a huge improvement on the skull.
"I've got a headache just behind my eyes" he said after he had downed the entire pint of water.
"Must be karma for your experiment on the behaviour of eyeballs in a food dehydrator." John took the glass from Sherlock's hand, went into the kitchen to refill it and put it down onto the little table next to the armchair. "Why don't you just take a painkiller?"
"I still have a rather high tolerance due to my former... habits." Sherlock sighed and started to impatiently rub his temples. "I just want it to go away. I can't think straight if there's this permanent pain."
"No wonder, you're doing it wrong." John stepped behind the armchair and brushed Sherlock's long fingers away from his temples. Instead he placed his thumbs behind his friend's ears and let the tips of his index and middle fingers lightly touch his temples. He started to rub the soft skin in slow, lazy circles and only with moderate pressure.
"It doesn't go away faster if you just rub hard and fast enough. It's a headache, not an erection, Sherlock." John's berating was soft and his tone was only half-mocking, he had grown accustomed to being the calming influence. "The key is moderation with both, pressure and pace."
Sherlock was silent as he felt his muscles relax, the tension he didn't even know was there fleeing from his body, he let out a little sigh of relief.
"Getting better? Can you think straight again?" John's voice was low as he asked. The headache slowly subsided, but he could think no straighter than before. The hormones rushing through him kept most of his mind from breaking away from the tingling sensation of John's fingertips on his temples and on the back of his head.
"Two more minutes and then I should be fine." Just a little indulgence. Just this once.